#Mario being initially callous is something I really want to try my hand at writing

[drones-of-innocence]

"Pedro Pascal is making me want to write edgy Mario fic"

Now i am very, very curious of what you would write because you usually write such fluffy Mario fics 👀

Oh you mean from this? 🤭

I do love writing sweet fluffy stuff more than anything else, but I can't deny there has always been at least a little bit of an animal inside that wants to explore some darker concepts 😳

I actually have a couple of ideas that go in a darker direction, but none of them have been fully fleshed out exactly. Sometimes I'll get started writing on something only for my muse to abandon it in favor of something else. So I'll just write down as much of the idea as it comes to me in the hopes that my darting, buzzing fly of a brain will come back to it sometime. It's worked before with stories like with Love Story, What They Don't See (which I have more plans for 👀) or Fresh Air particularly. But what I have published is not even half of the ideas I want to write 😭 So sometime maybe I'll end up having the inspiration (and nerve) to fully commit to a darker storyline, maybe even one with a bad ending.

For the Pedro Pascal (😩💘) thing in particular, a post-apocalyptic Mushroom Kingdom setting would be so fun to explore. I automatically think of the Mushroomy Kingdom stage from Super Smash Bros Brawl where everything was bleak and uninhabitable. Assuming it's a sort of "bad ending" premise where Bowser successfully takes over the Mushroom Kingdom in a disastrous war and Princess Peach was forced into hiding, that kind of leads me to try to fill in the hole of who Mario is in this story and why he doesn't know of her already since he apparently has notoriety himself, albeit at a possibly more illicit angle. Maybe he's a stranger to the Mushroom Kingdom (whether he's from our Earth or not) and the MK was sort of a mysterious/mythical state to the rest of the world before it was taken over by Bowser. How he wound up there might have to do with being stuck or trapped or even an attempt at retiring from the life he had before. (smuggling? bounty hunting? etc)

Maybe Peach is trying to get to the legendary Rainbow Road because it would allow her to access her magic power that has been severed due to Bowser's destruction? So she needs a reliable transport there since she can't navigate the dangerous overworld on her own. If she were able to access her power again, she would easily be able to oust Bowser and return the Mushroom Kingdom to its former lush, peaceful state. And Mario, perhaps a hardened and initially cold person due to rough experiences/loss, is called upon to assist this vulnerable character (just like Mando or Joel 🥺)

I'm so weak for an initial "refusal of the call" trope where the calloused character ends up changing his mind *of his own accord* (even if he pretends its a nuisance) just by virtue of experiencing the warmth and life of the innocent character. It accesses something soft inside him that he maybe believed was dead, or that he was never allowed/able to have before in the first place. In this case, Mario would see Peach's gentle kindness toward her suffering citizens and even towards himself, and it would open up a new world of possibilities in his heart 🤧💖

Along the way, they get assistance from old friends with Toad and Yoshi, and maybe even a bittersweet reunion with Luigi who has holed himself up for survival in an abandoned mansion. And as they get closer and closer to being able to travel down Rainbow Road, it becomes clear that a grand battle with Bowser is inevitable 🔥 And Mario, with newly accessed warmth and love in his heart, doesn't hesitate to march into battle for a Princess who believes in him ����